Point of No Return

These are the gates to Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany. I was there in June of 2008. the writing on the gate "Arbeit Macht Frei" roughly translates to "Work Makes You Free" or "Work Sets You Free"

Dachau was the first concentration camp opened in Germany, in March of 1933. Dachau served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi concentration camps that followed. Almost every community in Germany had members taken away to these camps, and as early as 1935 there were jingles warning: "Dear God, make me dumb, that I may not to Dachau come."

The camp was occupied from 1933 to 1960, the first twelve years as an internment center of the 3rd Reich. From 1933 to 1938 the prisoners were mainly German nationals detained for political reasons. In 1938 and after a significant population of German Jews was added. Subsequently the camp was used for prisoners of all sorts from every nation occupied by the forces of the 3rd Reich. From 1945 through 1948 the camp was used as a prison for SS officers awaiting trial. After 1948 the German population expelled from Czechoslovakia was housed there and it was also a base of the United States. It was closed in 1960 and thereafter at the insistence of ex-prisoners various sorts of memorials began to be contructed there.

No one knows for sure just how many prisoners were held at Dachau but one source gives a general estimate of over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries for the 3rd Reich's years, of whom two-thirds were political prisoners and nearly one-third were Jews. 25,613 prisoners are believed to have died in the camp and almost another 10,000 in its subcamps, primarily from disease, malnutrition and suicide. In early 1945, there was a typhus epidemic in the camp due to influx from other camps causing overcrowding, followed by an evacuation, in which large numbers of the weaker prisoners died. Toward the end of the war death marches to and from the camp caused the expiration of large but unknown numbers of prisoners. Even after liberation, prisoners weakened beyond recovery continued to expire.

Over its twelve years as a concentration camp, the Dachau administration recorded the intake of 206,206 prisoners and 31,951 deaths. Crematoria were constructed to dispose of the deceased. These numbers do not tell the entire story, however. Although there is no evidence of mass murder within the camp itself by other methods than poor sanitation, deprivation of medical care, withholding of nutrients, medical experiments, and beatings and shootings for infractions of the rules or at random, beginning in 1942 more than 3166 prisoners in weakened condition were transported to Hartheim Castle near Linz and there were executed by poison gas for reason of their unfitness. In 1941 and 1942 an unknown number of prisoners of war from the Soviet Union were executed by shooting at the camp's surrounding firing ranges, some for target practice and for sport.

Dachau was the second camp liberated by Brittish and American troops.